Education
WordPress Multisite for 12 faculties with central management
A scalable WordPress multisite for a university of applied sciences with 25,000 students and 1,500 staff.
Hogeschool Deventer · 4 months
The challenge
Hogeschool Deventer had 12 separate WordPress websites for each faculty, each with its own hosting, theme and administrators. This resulted in inconsistency, high costs and an enormous security risk. They wanted a centralised platform with local autonomy.
Our approach
Design of a WordPress Multisite architecture with shared resources and local customisation
Development of a custom parent theme with 12 child theme variants per faculty
Single Sign-On (SSO) integration with the existing identity management system (Active Directory)
Role-based access control: faculty admins can manage their own site without access to others
Central plugin management: critical plugins are network-enforced, faculties can choose optional plugins
Migration of all 12 existing websites preserving content and SEO
Training of 45 faculty administrators
Results
"The multisite platform has enormously simplified our IT management. Faculties have the freedom to customise their site, while we centrally ensure security and stability."